1. Field
The present invention relates to a design program, design apparatus, and design method for designing a dynamic reconfigurable circuit, in which a plurality of circuit configurations are implemented with a single circuit.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, reconfigurable circuits have been in practical use in which operation devices (processing elements, simply referred to as “PEs” hereinafter) that perform processes (e.g. calculation, selection, delay, etc.) are combined with a network that connects the PEs. Among reconfigurable circuits, circuits with large-scale PEs are called coarse-grained circuits. In a coarse-grained circuit, a set of information of operations of the PEs and connection information among the PEs and the network is called a context, which can be changed as needed.
Specifically, dynamic reconfigurable circuits are reconfigurable circuits capable of changing the context in about one clock. In a dynamic reconfigurable circuit, a plurality of circuit configurations can be implemented with a single electronic circuit by switching from one context to another.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-18514 describes an electronic Circuit that has units called clusters, each including a plurality of PEs, control systems and a network, in order to configure a part of the circuit dynamically and independently of the other parts.